Proposal(s) for Victoria 3

[Simoleum]

In terms of more uses for money:
Possibility of purchasing technology from allies, or something. (good for uncivs that just turned civilized). I bet that some technology would be easy to purchase, like steam-engines and what not.

Also possibility to purchase ships and similar from other countries. I think this could be cool. Like now I read that ships determine colonial power, and I need ships fast (takes 315 days to build), so I could purchase ships from Germany which I am in the sphere of, and that could be really cool actually.

EDIT: and possibility to purchase cores from countries that are struggling financially maybe?

Any thoughts?

 

[Simoleum]

Sorry for double post.
I also wish there was even MORE resources in the game maybe.. or provinces making more than 1 resource. Maybe top 3 exports?
I just read someone thinking of liquor factory producing beer aswell, which made me think of this, like including barley, and other resources into the game. In one way I think this would be really fun, but on the other hand it might get TOO much.

 

[Polarisan]

First of all I want to propose that there be no fixed limit on the GPs. GPs should be volatile, and the way to be a GP would be to actually take part in a war (doesn't have to be leading) and have a mayor contribution to the war. War contribution is handled in CK2 and EUIV so I don't know why it wouldn't be in V3.

I also want to propose the addition of a LOT more of resources. No "dumbing" it down, it's way to arbitrary at times and fails to represent most of the world's nations' produce. For example, Argentina back in 1880-1930 had an agroexportation model which basically meant that we exported mostly stuff RELATED to livestock. That means take a cow, kill it and sell its produce. What does it produce? A lot. You can produce milk with the cow alive, you can make meat and leather. That's 3 products that are easily used for different things IRL. Milk perishes quickly, while meat would behave that way before refrigerators (salt was used before them).

I support the notion of "continental" SOIs but you should keep in mind nations in South America where there is a serious problem of "trade" by land. For example, Chile wouldn't normally trade with Argentina by land (Andes?) And Paraguay is effed if they don't have an exit to a river (better representation of rivers is a must as well.) as they are in a pretty bad spot, so is Bolivia if they lose the access to the sea. I would love to have infrastructure deal a serious impact on the pops.

People living in the middle of the amazonas would not have the access to goods that someone living in Rio would. Mainly because people in Rio live next to the sea, making goods easier to come by. That is a reality today and should be even more impacting before.

I speak for my country, but a better representation of the entire "divisions" of the map could be created. First of all, states are a good... start, but a very lazy one. States should be created at the game start by default but they should be changeable. A lot of states in Germany were actually nations before, so that should be kept as a model later on. If Bavaria blobs a bit before Germany is formed, the state of Bavaria should remain kind of independent, kind of like vassals in CK2. Depending on the constitution of the nation or "crown laws" however you want to call it. (Constitutions might be a good idea. Simplify it to a political paradigm. Say a conservative constitution will allow far less changes than a socialist one for example). States could be created from other states to weaken "vassals".

In the new world, you could also have a nice system where you create your own states. You can have a BIG state all around the west coast of the united states, but such a huge vassal would be bad, right? so you make a lot smaller ones, but that's just as bad as they have no economical autonomy.

A fine balance should be set in the middle. And of course, Governors should be implemented. If a "province" or "state" votes radical it should affect that state and of course the upperhouse. Argentina actually had a constitution that allowed for the president to "intervene" a province and call for new elections if they didn't like the outcome. (conservative constitution anyone?)

Regarding the actual content of those "states" it should be a bit different than the actual model. I want to propose something similar to CK2 where you have a "capital" and several other settlements. The capital should be the district capital and will of course be a city. The other 3 settlements should all be towns. You won't have the chance to build "forts" or "farms", only new towns. BEHIND the capital and the 3 settlements there should be a "generalized" farmland that produces whatever farm-ish goods you can imagine. Of course, if you're in a mountain, you'll have a mountain. Farmland should produce around 3 or 4 products. Say your farlmand produces "livestock" which it then sells to the city/towns which process it and either consume it or sell it around. The city then could sell it to other cities or towns from the other actual provinces clausewitz divides the game map in. However if there is no demand for the good, the pops in those cities or towns will either stock it or export it.

Most of the time they'll sell it to a bunch of aristocrats or Capitalists in the big cities next to ports which then sell it to the foreign markets. Which is when infrastructure comes in. without proper railways, those provinces in the background of your nation are effectively cut off. Farm goods cannot be sold outside of that market, and only manufactured goods can be brought in by horse or stuff but it's pretty damn sure that you won't have anything interesting coming out of that province. It's the way a lot of people lived in the americas outside of the big places. They created an autonomous economy if they were not within reach of the railways.

I also want to propose a total reshaping of the research section. Research should not be decided by the government, rather by the pops. Exception is communism, but it should be very inneficient. Maybe a new use for Capitalism is to actually own a corporation. That corporation employs pops. In a country like Argentina which exports a lot of goods, their corporation would most likely be a trade oriented corp, so it's not going to be researching stuff outside of trade oriented stuff like railways and factories.

Clergymen and universitaries (new pop?) could be studying the "prestige" branch of research.

Soldiers and Officers work on the "military" aspect. However, there is no clear research path. It proceeds on it's own. High Literacy helps a lot, as well as having a lot of infrastructure between your big pop sites (more stories do reach the capital than they do reach Vladivostok).

Hmm... what else.

Of course, different currencies. I'm not telling PDS to work on every currency of every country, I'm asking them to set a "gold price" for a product that the market defines, and then every nation has it's "currency" affected by a porcentual value representing it's standard. For example, using a silver standard means that you have "more" money but less money in absolute values. This would affect the pops at the time of importing and exporting.

Anywho, I'm out of steam to write at the moment. I do have more ideas I'll post later.

Cheers

 

[Trickrs]

People living in the middle of the amazonas would not have the access to goods that someone living in Rio would. Mainly because people in Rio live next to the sea, making goods easier to come by. That is a reality today and should be even more impacting before.

The people in the Amazon still have the rivers, which reinforces you Paraguay's point.

I also want to propose a total reshaping of the research section. Research should not be decided by the government, rather by the pops. Exception is communism, but it should be very inneficient. Maybe a new use for Capitalism is to actually own a corporation. That corporation employs pops. In a country like Argentina which exports a lot of goods, their corporation would most likely be a trade oriented corp, so it's not going to be researching stuff outside of trade oriented stuff like railways and factories.

Darkest Hour have a similar system. You have 1-5 slots, each one can be fufilled by corporations/figures that can be assigned to research a certain technology (i.e. I want to research 1916 artillery, I fufill the slot with Krupp and order the research, apying money daily for that).

 

[Polarisan]

The problem with the Amazon is that it's not a river like the Parana. A very navigable river vs a river sorrounded by jungle and disease. Paraguay is kind of like in the same position, but not to that extreme.

 

[The B]

Far better newspapers (yes, I still want them).

For example, one should pop up immediately when war is declared (depending on settings). Some other examples:

When the warscore is 75-80%, and the game detects the player has started raising the warscore again, it comes up with:

BATTENBURG [or some high-scoring general] CALLS FOR "FINAL PUSH"​

When the enemy capital is taken, it comes with something simplistic like:

MOSCOW FALLS​

You get the idea.

 

[cacra]

Also newspapers should spin in like they do in the old movies

 

[EUTony]

What about a system where you control a party and not the nation and you have to jockey to get your party in power?

 

[1alexey]

I also want to propose a total reshaping of the research section. Research should not be decided by the government, rather by the pops. Exception is communism, but it should be very inneficient. Maybe a new use for Capitalism is to actually own a corporation. That corporation employs pops. In a country like Argentina which exports a lot of goods, their corporation would most likely be a trade oriented corp, so it's not going to be researching stuff outside of trade oriented stuff like railways and factories.

Well, research was largely directed by government in different ways. Fundamental sciences at the time were already pretty much government - sponsored, with smaller lever technology developed by corporations, and some theories developed by intelligentsia.

But still government and corporate sector did have a lot of coordination, due to needs of army and navy, also communications are transport infrastructure, so it is actually quite fine for government to guide fundamental research, and maybe the inventions should not just appear out of blue, but be researched by private capital, that would make the system realistic.

 

[th3freakie]

Soldier POPs should contribute to a national manpower level. It's far too annoying to have several 2500 people POPs and be forced to micromanage where each division comes from.

 

[Simoleum]

What if when you turn HM's, I feel there should be possibly some sort of movement of republicans that may increase if you lead poorly. Then an event might pop up where you can decide to turn into a democracy or stay HM's gov, or maybe a poll-. If the republicans win the poll you can decide wether to stay or not and if you decide to stay a monarcy, you get crazy militancy or rebels or something.

 

[Polarisan]

I would also like to propose a better war manouvering system.

Lot of times we've heard about the "move = attack" being a bad representation of battle mechanics. If we go by my earlier proposal of a 4 "hold" system per province. The capital and the other towns in the province would be attacked in a predetermined order by Clausewitz. However I do propose that a person actually has a chance to put an army in either settlement X,W,Y or Z. The defensive army can also do the same. That way, we can have an attacking army at Z and the defensive army at W in the same province. Combat would only start when either player goes on the "offensive" in that province. One can argue that this can be too micro, but I would understand that in Hearts of Iron. Victoria has relatively fewer provinces and fewer armies. In that case, the micro is really acceptable.

One can make a province "fully defended" by dividing the army in x4 and putting smaller forces in all settlements, waiting for reinforcements to come by (Waterloo?)

Ok, that's it for land stuff.

Onto the market. I want to see who the producers and buyers are of what material. This has to be better implemented in game. All we got was a top 5 producer list but that was not very informative. I want to see who offers and who demands, where those products are made and where they are consumed.

Another proposal I would like to make is a type of mapmode. I would love to see where livestock is produced for example. Yes, that's the RGO mapmode. However I would like to see it's relevance to the global market. So for example I go to the middle of the Volga and click a random province producing livestock. It should be a vibrant green if it's producing a huge amount of livestock. I would also like to see lines like we see in Hearts of Iron 3 telling us what the route of commerce is. The AI would have to be able to read this and optimize it's prime productions with better infrastructure than smaller ones.

This is how, in Argentina for example, railroad lines all went to Buenos Aires. Livestock was produced and it was all bought by Buenos Aires who then sold it to the external market. There was no incentive to do many other things. Cities along the Parana were sometimes used as a waypoint to Buenos Aires in the train lines and sometimes they were used to transport goods to Buenos Aires before export, but all in all, that was the way Argentina handled itself.

And we thrived somehow. Railway lines all lead to Buenos Aires (Somehow like All roads lead to Rome, we had a saying "God is everywhere, but his office is in Buenos Aires"), And it figures that we have a corridor from La Plata to Cordoba where most of the population of Argentina lives, and the rest of the nation is basically deserted. Railway lines tried to "plug" themselves to the lines leading to the capital which is why other cities became more important as well as waypoints.

All of this leads to a better interpretation of the RGO outputs and industrial produce of a nation and a state. AI and player should both be able to read that information and adapt their nation to work better doing that. in VII all I do at least is just build infrastructure everywhere. I want to have to make choices as to building infrastructure in the cities, or the farmland, or connecting the states or the cities.

Another important trade element should be port cities. They were not built huge from the start up and many had to keep expanding just to keep exports/imports going on in an orderly manner. I hear Rotterdam has an important port for the EU nowadays. I take it that it was not always like this. Same with Antwerp in Belgium.

There should be a physical limit to the imports and exports. Of course, if a nation barely imports, they should have extra capacity for exports, but there should be some sort of limit. Once you hit that cap you can no longer increase your exports and your nation is in a little problem.

Connecting that to a new matter. Merchant navies. I read someone making a post about it and we really have to look at it. They had a very important role up until WW2 (and later one may say) in commerce between nations, so much that the Germans had to start sinking them to cripple the Entente. It didn't work, but you can't blame them for trying.

You see Italy shipping gun components from Palermo to Naples or Milan. And you're at war with Italy as France and the Alps are a crude battle at the moment. It'll make a nice juicy target. Fair enough, nothing too seriously different from convoys in HoI3. But what if Austria is shipping that? How will they take it?

How did the Americans enter WW1? Sunk ships.

Technically, sinking non aligned ships is avoided, but we all know that all's fair in war and Paradox Games, so...

I have a few more ideas for later on about how to improve politics, which will come later on!

 

[General Baker]

I'd love a deeper revolution/rebellion/dissent/discontent system than just *X-sized stack appears* whackamole situations.

 

[Polarisan]

Regarding revolutions, I'd really like to have a chain of events that are generic that tell us that a state with a mayority of X pops in disagreement with the government decided to secede. Basically being able to throw an ACW scenario into any nation without it being "scripted"

There should also be a measure of popularity with the current government. If your current government is unpopular, even with a mayority of pops under your party's reach, you may still lose to other parties. Or your same party. There should be a chance to have different "formulas" for each party, minimum two, to ensure that a single party is never the best choice. You have choices in that same party.

Also, nationalist rebels should not go around whack-a-mole. They should secede immediately and start with a force consisting of whatever they muster up, with a chance of GPs helping them with money or barging in to help one side or the other. If it's just whack-a-mole there would be (and there isn't any at the moment) depth to revolts, other than "a gazillion rebels want to secede. get the point."

One should also not have full control of what your party does. For example say a nation like Finland wants to secede from Russia. If a separatist or a nationalist/regional party gets in control, they should fire a series of events that put you into a war with Russia or not, but basically wanting to secede from it, with or without support. It should not be a decision.

 

[Mikebloke]

I don't know much about the historical rush for africa and why exactly different countries had different named colonies, but I'd like to see some of the EU4 upcoming features to be implemented in a Vicky setting. We should have identifiable colonies/administrations from the same country, and preferably in varied shades of the host nations colour. This would break the big blob of blue and red that ultimately emerges and give the continent some sense of identity. If those colonies could be playable too, like they will be in EU4 with limited control, that would be interesting too. I don't know how you would separate one from the other though, EU4 I think is going to work on a blob system where once a colony becomes controllable, it can suck up fledgling colonies next to it. This might not work in Vicky, where culture and geography might be required (up major rivers inland, forested areas being part of one colony, etc) and individual administrative states as in Vicky 2 might not be enough or too constricting. This would then lead to an interesting HoI/EvsW scenarios when exported ;p

 

[unmerged(492592)]

I'd love to see pops being able to have no religion. That could have various effects to their actions, opinions and behavior. Then, the religious policy ranging from secularism through some degrees of tolerance (e.g. pluralism in V2) to full-on enforcement of ruler's/ruling party's preference (as moralism, or harder) would ensure you can mix any possible kind of approach. Including hard communism's anti-theism (full enforcement+prefer atheism), which wasn't modelled well in Vicky2.

BTW I know this was discussed in multiple Vicky2 threads. It was argued the label of religion was a part of cultural identity of pops. But there is a culture label for that (which can be complicated to incorporate various kinds of heritage, included religion of ancestors).

 

[Simoleum]

Blockading a country fully (island nations or similar countries without any landbridges to the rest of the world) should make them have virtually 0 export I think. To cut off trade to help break a nation maybe? I'm not sure what you guys think.

 

[soda7777777]

What about a system where you control a party and not the nation and you have to jockey to get your party in power?

So a CK2 version of Vicky?

I'd like to have ministers added to the game. It feels weird without them.

 

[Tophattingson]

Province size should be roughly equalized as it is in HOI3, where all of Europe has equal sized provinces. This is specifically to fix the rather bizarre issue of the game counting huge rural regions with high population (such as the Urals in Vic2) as being huge urbanized cities for migration bonuses.

 

[Leon_The_Killer]

Okay, I've had this idea of a new war system sitting in my head for a while. Now, I fully accept that this idea is 99% likely to a pipe dream that will never be put in any paradox game ever, but I feel like I should at least tell SOMEONE about it.

I would like a war system where I don't directly control my armies.

Now, before you go and scream at me about how I'm some retard who doesn't understand PD games and needs to go back to living in my hole, let me explain this idea.

When a player declares war on someone, instead of just clicking on where he would like his armies to go and watch them sit till the fort surrenders, he should enter some kind of "War Screen" with a map of the fronts in the war. On this screen, he is given details and stats on everything about the war he should know about: Both side's nations/allies, army size, leaders, public opinion, primary terrains that the war is fought on, monthly income vs. military maint, total money spent on war, ect. All the information's purpose is to show who has (( or would have, if war has not yet been declared )) which advantages if a war takes place. This screen is where most of the interaction with the war will take place. The player is given the ability to make choices that will influence what is going on here. For example, while the player cannot directly command where his soldiers go, he can assign armies and generals to work toward various goals, like "Occupy X Region" or "Defend X area of the border from attacks". Furthermore, the player controls the amount and kind of soldiers in armies, areas to focus fortification in, equipment and rations provided to armies, ect.

When the player is done deciding on how he will handle the war, he unpauses the game and lets the war happen. Here, the choices the player made in the "War Screen" begin to take effect. How well supplied soldiers are, how MANY soldiers there are available, the kind of generals leading armies, the terrain the war is being fought on, and the previous history of the war all give their respective effects. As the war progresses, there should be a clear effect on the game's map as well. Occupation lines should make it clear which side is currently making gains, and perhaps a cool "razed" effect on the terrain map to show how hard various areas have been hit. The ultimate idea is that the players success in the war depends on these factors. If a player appoints inefficient and corrupt generals to poorly supplied and disciplined soldiers so they can fight in unfamiliar and inhospitable lands, he will tend to lose more battles then he wins. The opposite is, of course, true as well. The player needs to play towards his advantages and use his opponent's disadvantages against him in order to achieve victory.

Lets be honest, the PD grand Strategies have never been really GOOD at war (( with the exception of HoI )). A more abstracted system may be far more interesting and compelling then the quite frankly annoying micromanagement of armies.